Rising Tide – Micro Memoir

In Newport, on the side of the road, my family pulled over to play by the sea. I took photos of the water with my little Instax Mini while my father in law watched my daughter. In an instant, the tide starts pouring in. I see my daughter alone on a jetty, my father in law nowhere nearby. I start calling to her to come back. She points to the water and starts to climb in to get back to me. She cannot swim. Frantic, I am sprinting toward her. The sea has claimed so much of me in my dreams. It will not take my daughter from me in what passes for real life

“Til Human Voices Wake Us and We Drown

My boat is small and rickety. It’s just me and the vast blue sea. Suddenly a violent swelling – a wave rising. At first I think the wave will be large and crash momentarily, so I brace myself for impact. But then the wave doesn’t crash down. It becomes ginormous. It looms over me, watching me. “When you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” It boils up to a height that makes me miniscule. Then, stillness. So still. If this wave falls down on me, I will drown. But it doesn’t move. It only watches. Until the sound of voices…

Letter K

Wears polka dots and has red galoshes. She smokes hookah when no one is watching, and swigs honey from the hive when they are. She has a 2nd grade education but makes mean cookies. They bite back. On a rainy summer day she kisses the daffodils, her lipstick print on each one like a signature.

Getting Ready for the End

Firstly, fashion flits over my face like flickering fire.
Then comes the 6 pound, 12.5 oz scream.
Then the blackness of hungry water.

Down deep below diamonds where water is a dream state
Like Florida glittered with snow,
My smile stretches to accommodate the black pressure
Of shadows squeezed to a paste.
Friendly, the robot makes conversation with me
While he robs me of my fingers.
If the scream should rush back into me, I would die.

My language slips across the grass
In only a slip,
Her nakedness plain to all the angels.

At my vanity,
Choosing a face to wear,
I remember that time on the backporch
When you showed me you loved me.

Vice – a Vision

I fill my prescription for vice and carry it home. The birds snub me at the sight of it. In the family room, a river flows clear as glass. I will inject insight in ten minutes. First, I must cool off in the freezer, my blood snow crystals protruding from my wasted heart. Letters float down the river, boat shaped thoughts from those abandoned on the shores of paradise with plastic strangling them. People in my taxonomy run up the current to bury our dreams, and then we die. Vice is heavy, fills the syringe slowly like syrup. I will glow with my own private, disinterested light. Cold light, liquid light, light around my bones. My sins a dark figure behind me seen through to as the light beams into me mercilessly. In the corner, dust bunnies paint my corrupted face without pity.